Yeah, it’s a bit fucked to call things “unprocessed anger” etc etc when the things that caused what we’re angry about are at best still happening and more likely getting worse.
I’ve seen certain politicians described as “too angry” before their eventual replacement. You know what, I want an anger politician, just one who is angry about real issues. I want somebody who realizes how shitty things are for the average citizen and wants them to change, then gets angry at the fuckers who sit with their thumbs up their ass with thoughts, prayers and empty platitudes while collecting massive paycheques (and bribes) then actively calls them out.
Note that this doesn’t mean I want a dumbass who complains about "foreign smoke " or lies and abuses issues while acting like a petulant toddler who didn’t get their way out or personally profit, I just want somebody who actually cares and if they do… then fuck yes they should actually be angry about the way things are and the direction they’re going.
Okay, but, my fellow tumblrite, therapy isn’t going to help with that. When you went to your therapist, they assumed you want to stop feeling a certain way and feel different. If you don’t want the help they can offer to achieve that (which is valid), why are you there?
clippy pfps are stupid, btw. microsoft was already evil by the time clippy was introduced
That’s not the point. Its a reminder that in the late 90s/early 00s, MS was slapped with multiple antitrust lawsuits for their evil actions. Its not
remember how great MicroSoft was
its
remember when the powers that be at least pretended to care about consumer rights
what???
…what does this mean???
Say ‘what’ again. I dare you! I double-dare you, motherfucker!
what???
Member when the government cared about monopolies and forced companies to split completely when they got too much market share?
Or that time a deadly flu swept through the world and while it did kill a bunch of people (and change the course of history in interesting ways), people and the government followed best practices known by science at the time and social distanced/masked up as best they understood it? Yeah, it got a racial nickname of Spanish flu despite it not originating there but still.
Yes. Maybe the anger is justified, but is it helpful?
Being furious all the time is really hard on your body. It’s hard on your relationships with other people.
Anger is useful in a fight where it can be used to overcome fear and ignore pain. But, it’s hard to go to bed and get a good night’s rest if you’re still seething with anger.
Maybe, sometimes, anger can be a good thing in the long term if you want to maintain the energy needed to get a law changed or something. That’s not something that happens overnight, and it’s easy to get discouraged. But, you need to be able to balance that with being able to sleep properly, to socialize, to perform well enough at your job so you don’t get fired and don’t end up homeless.
If you just want to be angry, then stop wasting the therapist’s time, and wasting your own money.
Exactly. Whether or not you feel justified in your anger and grief, it is maladaptive to hold onto them if it is preventing you from living your life. You can move past awful things, but you have to actually recognize the issue and want to change.
It is no measure of health to be well adapted to profoundly sick society.
At what point do we acknowledge that YOUR response is maladaptive for the human race as a whole because it has led us here? It has led us to this point. You people who decide that feeling calm and at ease is more important than dealing with dangerous people or situations.
I am angry because these things are still present. I am angry because they are not being dealt with in any way. If you want me to “adapt” to my environment and learn to live with the evils that take place daily, to not be angry when I see mothers liquified by our bombs, to be calm when I see police drag a man out of a council meeting for clapping 3 times, you can get fucked.
You can get absolutely fucked. I will remain BLOODTHRISTY AND CONSUMED BY RAGE until I can QUENCH MY FUCKING THIRST.
It isn’t about the external world though. You could live in a utopia, experience grief and loss, and be unable to feel happy or do the things you want to do for your whole life because of it.
Regardless of the condition of the world, you would suffer. Suffering is an internal, mental state.
I think it is best to try to reduce that suffering as an end in itself. But you could also think about it in terms of helping the suffering person achieve whatever it is that they want. No matter what it is they want to do, letting go of their attachment to their suffering will be beneficial. That includes changing the material conditions that caused the event in the first place. It is easier to do that if you aren’t suffering.
Also, that is not to say they just “forget” and move on. It is simply that their relationship to the event that caused the suffering has changed. You can accept that the event occurred and that you suffered, but not allow it to cause you further suffering. That’s easier said than done, but it is possible if someone wants to attempt it.
What happens when people let go of their suffering is that they let go of any real drive to do anything about it. I have known people that have suffered and through counseling have bettered their life. But the thing that caused their suffering? Unaffected. Unchanged. And if not forgotten, ignored or some small pittance of virtue signaling that they care about it. Our society is so unbelievably shit at solving problems. We only ever sweep them under the rug.
Economic crash? Bailout
People hit by cars while walking on the road because there is not sidewalk? They shouldn’t walk on the road, idiots. Forgotten
Wealth disparity? Ooh look! Another subscription to an app I use once a month.
People don’t even attribute the suffering to its actual cause most of the time.
If we want to change things, you need the impetus of extreme emotion to really get shit done. If you have relieved yourself of the suffering, of the anger or grief or fear of something, how could you care about it? How could you possibly claim to care about it to the same degree?
People only want to be comfortable. They don’t want to make the world better, as long as they are comfortable in their own little heads.
i think a therapist should be able to help their patient with feels that are the correct reactions to a situation, without resulting to a “why aren’t you over this already?”
i bet this specific form of anger also makes the patient feel incredibly hopeless, so their mind has a choice - to feel anger, or despair, they chose anger, and it needs to be worked through in a healthy way, not just gotten over with
What is a healthy reaction to the realization that you live in a society that does not care for you? That rewards sociopaths who will lie for their own wealth and power in ways that kill millions?
i’ve got no idea man. maybe trying to do activism?
my imperfect solution was to limit media intake, i’m fully aware i’m just holding hands in front of my eyes pretending i don’t see - but you know what, i’m no longer depressed, i’m no longer riddled with anxiety… so i guess plugging your ears and going lalalalala works. (i have to add that i do my best to stay kind of informed, but not too much. basically whatever memes give me, i’ll know)
I can’t say you are wrong.
Probably looks a lot like this:
One where you channel the anger into positive change. For some that’s volunteering and doing something to help the cause they’re so angry about, for others it may be working hard to emigrate to a different country that doesn’t embrace disease as a virtue. That’s where the therapist can help, not by invalidating the patient’s feeling, which everyone should learn in psychology 101.
That’s basically what the op is about. Anger is an appropriate reaction and the therapist is treating it like it isn’t.
Yes. Maybe the anger is justified, but is it helpful?
Being furious all the time is really hard on your body. It’s hard on your relationships with other people.
Anger is useful in a fight where it can be used to overcome fear and ignore pain. But, it’s hard to go to bed and get a good night’s rest if you’re still seething with anger.
Maybe, sometimes, anger can be a good thing in the long term if you want to maintain the energy needed to get a law changed or something. That’s not something that happens overnight, and it’s easy to get discouraged. But, you need to be able to balance that with being able to sleep properly, to socialize, to perform well enough at your job so you don’t get fired and don’t end up homeless.
If you just want to be angry, then stop wasting the therapist’s time, and wasting your own money.
A mental health therapist can and should be able to help a client manage their righteous anger as they work their way through it together. Anger underlies a great many things, and grief is one of them. You don’t just say, “I don’t want to feel angry,” or just decide, “I’m not going to be angry about this anymore,” when the rage is this broad and deep and well-established: in time, that kind of denial and repression is just going to explode in your face, if it works at all.
Instead, because anger is very well understood, there are known ways to deal with it. Anger doesn’t just disappear on its own, nor even very quickly, and a person suffering this kind of grief could use some assistance diving into the anger and the very exact specifics that are causing it. The therapist should be able to navigate this presenting anger with relative ease and guide the client through it, not just with skillful therapeutic inquiries to get to the very specific root of this writer’s unique grief which is where they’d start, but also with coping skills to give the client to be able to self-manage their righteous rage for as long as it takes them to work through it and clear it so that their overwhelming grief can resolve.
This therapist is doing none of that. Instead, they are just offering commentary on the presence and length of the anger as though they’re watching a movie, when they could and should be helping the writer sort it out and work through it. That’s not on the writer, that’s on the therapist.
Yes but to what end? It doesn’t sound to me like they want to manage it and work through it and clear it. They want to hold on to their anger.
No, they really don’t. What they want is to feel better, and for their therapist to stop playing “no shit Sherlock” with their pain by pointing out obvious irrelevancies in regard to it.
What they want to hold onto is the very specific, unique truth to their grief that is invariably found behind the anger. When they find it, that very specific point or points fueling the rage, they no longer need the anger: it has served its purpose.
That’s not in the post though. It might be true but the post is saying they want to stay angry (until society properly deals with the fallout from the pandemic). Anything else is your interpretation based on what might seem logical but without even knowing them.
Lol, no. Why would this writer by choice be paying a therapist his time and cash to painfully bare his soul so that the therapist can say idiotic things to him and not just assist him in remaining exactly where he is, but actively make it worse?
Dude, he could get that for free (and probably already is from friends and family telling him he needs to “move forward” like that’s just a decision he can make).
Look again. That person is simply telling the therapist they will not release their anger just because society has said it’s been long enough. That’s just not how it works, and this writer knows it. The writer will release the anger when the anger has served its purpose. That is not accomplished with facile lies, much less casual grief-shaming.
Frankly, a therapist should know what purpose anger serves off the top of their head: that alone would guide them forward. Not everyone does, and that’s okay, just not so much in a therapist.
But when you can’t recognize a overt cry of anguish and grief, and you mistake someone correcting their therapist from that place of inner agony for someone that “wants to stay angry,” all you’re really telling me is that you’ve never had a situation like the writer’s, nor a therapist that could take you through your darkest hour and help you see what you needed to see to get back out of the cave of your grief again.
Truly amazing how you can diagnose people from a distance, solely from what they write.
I know this comes as news to you, but this has all been studied literally since the beginning of time. Anger was discussed by the earliest philosophers. The writer openly describes it himself.
So what’s the diagnosis I’ve provided? Do you even know what an diagnosis is, or is that just a word you threw at me because it sounded smart and – wait for it – you’re angry?
It’s not saying that they want to stay angry, it’s that being angry about it is righteous and justified, and everyone should be angry enough about it to prevent something like it from ever happening again. But half of people still don’t even acknowledge covid was real, nevermind the social issues it exposed. Being angry is a reasonable response.
And I agree that it’s reasonable. Which, in my mind, translates directly to “I don’t want to stop being angry, stop trying to make me calm down.”
I think it’s more “stop telling me that being angry isn’t an appropriate response to current social issues.” The therapist could be working on coping strategies or mindfulness techniques to deal with the anger in constructive ways.
I’d make a point of just going off at anyone who mentioned Covid to me, and making them as uncomfortable as possible. Make them regret ever opening their mouth.
🫂
Based.
Sometimes anger protects you 🤷🏻♂️
I work in the brain injury field (long term rehab). It’s uncanny how similar it is. Post injury, you get two varieties: They recognize they’ve suffered the trauma, but refuse to acknowledge deficits or are completely incapable of registering the injury in any way, shape, or form.
I’m astounded as to how many of them that are high functioning fall into the ‘there was no COVID’ crowd.
This isn’t anger it’s resentment. Resentment is a poison pill that you swallow, hoping it harms your enemy. The only way through is to forgive. Or you can carry it around the rest of your life, if that feels right for you. Revenge isn’t going to bring your mother back. If you want to be at peace, make peace with it.
There’s an even better way through it. Fight back. Use it as motivation to change a broken system. Kick the idiots out of power, and make sure this can never happen again. Make Mom’s sacrifice mean something.
This. I’m tired of pathologizing “uncomfortable” reactions. It is appropriate to have resentment over what they described. But also - none of the remedies they say they want are actually vengeful? Oh no - they want a stronger CDC, and a monument to those lost and some opportunity for societal-level grieving.
The person who posted this isn’t dealing with this poorly. They are pointing out that our society dealt with this disaster poorly, diving head-first into violent denial. And that our response as a society is continuously re-traumatizing them as someone who lost their mother.
We are all in the madhouse created by Fox News, fascists, megalomaniacal billionaires and white nationalists. Maybe being told this is a personal mental health problem is a problem and worth criticizing.
One family living down the road from me lost an adult son to COVID because the 3 men of the house, father & 2 sons, believe(d) that the vaccine makes men sterile and of course they refused to wear masks. Despite mandates against large indoor gatherings, the family opted to have a funeral service with 100+ people packed into the church. A bunch of attendees ended up with COVID in the week or two following, one of which died. Very likely, the bulk of those folks got it at the funeral, as there are photos showing that almost nobody was wearing a mask nor social distancing.
Another set of neighbors, the wife was homebound due to poor health, but otherwise she still managed keeping up with yard and house work, cooking, cleaning, taking care of herself, etc. The husband spent his days of retirement out gallivanting with his buddies, hanging out unmasked and unvaxxed at bars, and places like that. The wife who never left the house, ended up with COVID. Pretty obvious he gave it to her considering he was feeling under the weather the prior week and she never left the house, but since he refused to take a COVID test, he would insist he never had it. She survived, but it left her physically and mentally disabled, not really able to take care of herself, forcing him to become her care taker. Then he passed away, largely due to ignoring his health and troubling signs.
I know I should be angry, but mostly I’m sad.
I’d say we’re in a far worse position if we were to get a COVID-26 after everyone started openly embracing anti-science and anti-empathy thanks to the MAHA/MAGA folks.
I mean it’s like certainly going to happen again, in a few years – it insane they didn’t triple whatever budget the CDC had in my opinion but yeah these people would rather die than see their favorite party lose an election. Look up Dying of Whiteness, it’s literally all a big death cult.
Yeah, any rational person in charge of public policy post-CoViD would say, “Oh wow, we could’ve done that much better; let’s shift how we’re doing things.”
But as usual, MAGA doubled down for propaganda purposes.
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN MAGA DOUBLED DOWN
BIDEN WAS THE FUCKING PRESIDENT FOR ALMOST THE ENTIRE PANDEMIC
SPECIFICALLY THE PART YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT
Specifically we’re talking about when trump gutted the cdc
Exactly.
I don’t know why SinAdjetivos felt the need to Whataboutism/“both sides” this issue; it’s clearly a concerted effort from MAGA to undermine science literacy for various reasons.
You can tell they’re not arguing in good faith because they equivocated MAGA to anyone (including Bill Clinton) saying they want to make America great again, which is obviously not the same thing.
If someone says they want to make America great again by instituting economic reforms like FDR, they are very obviously not MAGA.
I know you mean this as sarcasm, but not only was Biden the president for the majority of the pandemic, there was a democratic supermajority.
It wasn’t just MAGA doubling down. It’s a concerted doubling down from nearly every major institution and demographic. It’s easy to blame MAGA, but it’s plainly obvious that the problem lies much deeper.
MAGA is leading the charge I mentioned. You can try to blame the apathetic and confused all you want, but they’re not the ring leaders.
“Make America Great Again” was a line that Bill Clinton loved to use as well.
If by “MAGA” you mean socioeconomic elites with strong ties to projects like the heritage foundation and frequent fliers at destinations like Epstein’s island then I’m 100% in agreement!
Obamacare was architechted by the heritage foundation.
Jim Crow Joe had a supermajority during the pandemic, did nothing and declared the pandemic “over” right before the deadliest wave. Voiced his true feelings when he said “you aint black!” If you don’t support him. Achieved his careerlong ambition of overturning Roe V Wade but didn’t quite manage to kill Medicare/Medicaid which was his real personal pet project.
I don’t blame you for being confused and you clearly aren’t apathetic, but you need to get informed otherwise you will continue to focus on the “scary” monster while the real enemy continues to flank.
In other words, “both sides?”
One party is demonstrably worse. The other is failing to oppose them sufficiently.
Their sins are far from equal as you anecdotally suggest.
see a terrible opinion
look inside
.ml
look at posting history
“actually russia is anti-imperialist, western propaganda etc etc”
russia is anti-imperialist and irredentist.
they aid countries like cuba against the imperialist blockade (anti-imperialism), and they also conquer land from ukraine (irredentism)
of course you’re going to completely reject this cus of my instance, but anyway
i do not support the russian invasion of ukraine btw
If an imperialist nation opposes an imperialist nation (to serve their own imperialist goals), neither can be realistically labeled anti-imperialist.
what imperialist goals does russia have
obama reduced the blockade against cuba
is obama anti-imperialist
See now I am angry for this person.
And that seems pretty reasonable.
Yeah society start to make people feel angry.
Okay this was definitely the best thing to see first thing when I got in the internet when I got home from a funeral
Sorry for your loss. And as this post says, feel free to feel all the emotions you might be experiencing now.
I don’t know how close you were to the deceased, but I’m sure with time, and being surrounded by your loved ones (be them either people, or pets) I’m sure you’ll be able to eventually get through this.
… Unless the funeral you’re coming from is Lindsey Graham’s, in which case, join me in cheer and joy:
Black Americans are still mad about racism, too
As they should be
The worst part about things like this is when you try to have a conversation like this with your average friend/coworker/acquaintance/etc. they’re all like, “calm down; you’re overreacting”. I’m like, “no, fuck you; you’re underreacting! People DIED.”
Has anyone else over the age of 35 notice a major shift the past couple of decades regarding how little people care about literally anything? It’s like humanity as a whole have turned into emotional zombies. You can’t even say hi to strangers in public anymore. They just stare at you like, “who are you and why the fuck are you talking to me”? It’s so bizarre compared to how people used to be in the 90s and 2000s. Nobody even wants to make eye contact with anyone anymore, let alone wave as you pass each other down the street. Not unless you’re someone they know.
It’s as if people forgot how to communicate with each other outside of the internet… Is it just me? Maybe I just have a bitchy resting face. IDK. But anyway this YT Short perfectly exemplifies exactly want I mean. (Piped link)
they’re all like, “calm down; you’re overreacting”. I’m like, “no, fuck you; you’re underreacting! People DIED.”
Worst part is the response I’ve gotten from this. “It was just some old people and those that would have died anyway from something else.”
Has anyone else over the age of 35 notice a major shift the past couple of decades regarding how little people care about literally anything?
Until it impacts them personally, yes. Knew someone who thought covid was a common cold (had relatives with mild symptoms of any), then they caught it and it rocked them. Suddenly it wasn’t anything to make fun of anymore. If they didn’t have bad symptoms, they still wouldn’t care.
It’s as if people forgot how to communicate with each other outside of the internet… Is it just me?
Definitely not just you.
“it was just some old people…”
This experience has permanently damaged my patience for alleged “human beings”. I’m with you on this, on how much it sucked, because my dad was once if those old people. This fucking plague killed him when he could’ve had at least a decade more to enjoy in life… My mother had just had a stroke and she needed him more than ever right when he got taken away. Now, every time I ever hear about someone dying, the math happens automatically in the back of my mind before I even get to recognize that it’s happening:
Was the person who died at least as good a person as my father?
Because if not, fuck em.
I have no patience for the continued existence of anyone who isn’t at least as kind, patient, generous, or warm as him. Which means VERY NEARLY every single fucking Republican. If they all died i would feel NOTHING. not even relief. But especially not grief. THEY DID THIS. I have nothing for them but revulsion. There is now a stark cutoff in my perception beyond which absolutely NOTHING matters. Only things that are better than that threshold are worth while. Literally everything else is beneath my attention.
Anything that is not at least going well enough, beneficially enough, to exist above that threshold, i have no time for. No room for in my perceptual horizon. I am one bad week from writing off all of existence and going out with maximal sabotage.
My completely unrequested advice: try your best to stay or become the person that those you look up to (including your departed father) would be happy with you becoming. If you feel like you’re overly frustrated and about to have a breakdown, do whatever you can to bring yourself back.
If that means you need to step away and take a vacation into a yurt or cabin in the woods with a Nintendo DS or a friend: do it. Therapy also helps if your insurance can afford it, and if you find the right therapist (most allow you to have a call to assess good fit).
Hang in there.
What if doing that for decades has resulted in nothing?
Unfortunately society feels like it’s headed to another historical event where the classes have to remind each other what the deal was, likely with violence.
I think being overexposed to so many issues around the world is making people numb - especially when they don’t know what to do about it.
(There may be other factors - for example, less densely populated areas being more open because there’s more time per person to go around or something like that - but I think overexposure is a big bit of it).
We need more ways to act rather than just react.
For example, here’s a long Covid research fundraiser link
This is by far the most crazy transition that has happened in my lifetime. And I remember being asked “smoking or non smoking?”
we’re turning into homogenised soup. Endless parade of milquetoast pillows with beige opinions and the depth of a puddle. Where is your passion. Where is your rage. “omg u so confrontational” I am human. if you cannot deal with a normal range of human emotions you are fucked
You’re so negative is what I constantly got from my ex wife. Yeah, the world is fucked, and I feel the need to talk about it.
Today I saw someone on my morning walk, he said hi, I said hi back, and then he reacted like I hadn’t responded and got pissed off at me (“I guess its NOT a good morning, then!”). Every single human interaction outside my intimate circle makes me feel horrible. This guy just chose not to hold up his part of the bargain. It’s like he chose to react badly, no matter what I actually did.
Nobody even wants to make eye contact with anyone anymore
idk about you but i’m heavily autistic
So am I but I still force myself do it because I don’t want everyone to think I’m an asshole.
valid
i long ago stopped masking for the comfort of neurotypicals. but to each their own
Seems like in life the better way to get along is to learn to work with the normal rather than flat out rejecting it and somehow thinking you are special.
What a beautifully ableist take.
How’d
work with the normal rather than flat out rejecting it and somehow thinking you are special.
Work out for any minority group in history?
Spoiler: not well.
That’s a weird therapist.
Sounds like they need a new therapist that isnt oxygen deprived by having their head so far up their own ass that its lodged in their small intestine.
This is like saying “Your anger is inappropriate, Yes your mother was murdered, and yes the killer is still out there killing, and yes a solid 1/3rd of people in the country are either actively cheering for the killer or refusing to acknowledge their existence depending on convenience to the discussion, thus resulting in your trauma and wounds being violently torn back open every. single. day. for. entire. fucking. years… But thats obviously a you problem, and you need to deal with it and get over it”
